Changing the SMTP Server Port in SBS 2008

I have recently upgraded a server, and in doing so, migrated from Microsoft Small Business Server 2003, to the new 2008 version. In doing so, I planned to change how the Exchange server was setup.

All email is downloaded to Outlook from a POP3 account on the web server, it is then synced with Exchange so that all the emails are stored on the local server and can be accessed from any computer.

My aim was to change it so that Microsoft’s POP3 Connector which comes with SBS 2008 could be used to download the emails directly to the server, and then from there Outlook can access them. In doing this I also wanted to have the local server handle routing sent mail to the SMTP server to actually send them out to recipients.

This was relatively straight forward using the “Windows SBS Console”. The wizards guide you through the process of setting up the POP3 Connector, then for sending mail through an external SMTP server, the Smart Host wizard guides you through that too. It doesn’t take into account however that some users might not want to use port 25 to send mail.

After a great deal of searching around, I could not find anything in the Exchange Console or the help documentation about it. Even Google wasn’t being too helpful. Finally though, I came across a forum post on Tech Solutions which explains how to change the port.

It looks like there is no way to do it through the graphical Exchange Console, instead you need the shell.

Check the port again to make sure it is right: Get-SendConnector | fl port

This will change the port of every send connector, so you should really only use this if you have one send connector, or if they all need to be the same port. If you have multiple send connectors using different ports, you will need to specify which send connector to change:

Get the names of the send connectors: Get-SendConnector

Check the ports used using the same command as above: Get-SendConnector | fl port